Arizona Real Estate Notebook

Soon Fannie and Freddie will be pumping $200 billion out to holders of delinquent mortgages guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie. A lot of that $200 billion will be reinvested back into mortgages, putting downward pressure on mortgage interest rates and offsetting to some degree the upward pressure on interest rates caused by the end later this month of the Federal Reserve program of purchasing mortgage backed securities (MBS).

That $200 billion infusion is a one time occurence. Its dampening effect on mortgage interest rates will diminish over time.

BTW, Fannie and Freddie should have bought out those delinquent mortgages long ago. Instead, for political and/or accounting reasons, Fannie and Freddie have been making payments each month to the holders of those delinquent (guaranteed) mortgages instead of just buying them out when it became clear the mortgages were total losses. So all those monthly payments Fannie and Freddie made on all those no-hope delinquent mortgages were a total and complete loss of taxpayer money.

…but it was good for the mortgage holders.